A choose your own Intermittens (or something)

[hashishi]

Ive had an interesting idea for a while now, using the Choose Your Own Adventure format for non-fiction. The idea comes from the linear nature of writing. Often I find that I'm trying to discuss too many points at once and a way to get around this is to provide the reader with choice, do I want to read about X or Y now?

This could easily be taken further, people seem to have different takes on different aspects of Discordianism. These differences, rather than being glossed over, could be accentuated within a publication, so that when an idea gets challenged the alternative also gets put forward so both arguments can be explored. Different branches can lead to their own conclusions too, so that people will get more from the work, the more times they read it.

I originally envisioned this idea being used to do some sort of overview of Philosophy, but I am lazy and it will probably never happen. Rather than the idea fading from my memory I thought it could do some good here.

If people are at all interested, we could set up some sort of Wiki, like Cramulus' Choose your own adventure story.

[Valerie - Gone]

You know, that sounds like a rather interesting idea, to me. This idea made me think of a thread somewhere around here where Rat and someone were talking about their different viewpoints and eventually had to agree to disagree, I think. I'm not really sure how this thing would be set up, but it would be an interesting tool for people new to Discordia.

[Cramulus]

Very interesting idea! I always wanted to record a CYOA album, where the songs follow a storyline you can navigate through by fastforwarding to different tracks.
("If you think the band should escape the city of the Mole King, go to track 9")



I think this would be fun to write as a fiction exercise.

We could actually write it at the Adventure wiki page, and then just dump the pages into a PDF (plus some formatting).

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I actually don't know why it has to be fiction. I mean, nonlinear style has been applied to fiction narratives endlessly.

Why not have a number of essays by different people about the same thing, with a certain number of subjects in common, and interlink them at crossover points (for instance, this paragraph in dude A's essay is similar to this one in dude B's essay, so when I'm done with dude A's paragraph, I can either go to the next paragraph in dude A's essay, or the paragraph following the similar one in dude B's essay).

I think it might be best not to label which one is from the same guy's essay and which one is from someone else's.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

CYOM, Choose Your Own Model... I like it! (But you all knew that already)

Now it seems to me that we could do something along the lines of the old 'UNIX Timeline Chart' which shows all of the branches and forks of the UNIX OS and *NIXlike OS's

We can start, even pre-PD:

Where would you like to start your own model:

Absurdism: Philosophors, Authors
Reality Modification: Emperor Norton
Zen: Renzai School background
Art: Dada movement
Occult: Crowley, Spare... moar?
Historical Archetypes: Trickster, Historical examples (remember that native american group that always said the opposite of what they were gonna do?)

Then from all those 'roots' we merge to Mal-2 and Omar, then we can start another split. We can choose to follow Omar's Zenarchy, RAW's philosophy, maybe Stang's Fundamentalism, etc.

Then from each of those we can start building the next branches. From the PD and from RAW we can tie reality grids and filters to the BiP, from there we can explore multiple BiP views and other models like Shrapnel and Ruts and Slopes and even the BiD that Cain mentioned the other day.

This is awesome, rather than saying 'Discordia is..." or "The BiP is..." or "Bob is..." it just displays information in a relational way that allows the user to select their own reality....


GENIUS!!!!!!!
I love it.

[Dead Kennedy]

I like the idea of doing this as non-fiction.

I think this could work very well for an issue that explores the history and development of Discordianism.

Start with an introduction page that talks a bit about the Principia and mentions both 60s counter culture and RAW.  Ends with "Want to know more about Robert Anton Wilson?  Go to page 23.  Want to learn more about the influence of 60's Counter Culture on Discordianism?  Go to page 17."

Page 17 has an article about the Influence of 60's Counter Culture on Discordianism and mentions Robert Anton Wilson and Tim Leary.  Ends with "Want to know more about Robert Anton Wilson?  Go to page 23.  Want to learn more about Tim Leary?  Go to page 5."

And so on and so forth.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Why label the links when they can be a surprise?

[Dead Kennedy]

Why label the links when they can be a surprise?

Because otherwise they aren't really choices.  Without information to base the choice on, the reader is simply picking a random page.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Well, okay, you have a point.


Why label the links accurately and/or non-{ambiguous,misleading}ly?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, okay, you have a point.


Why label the links accurately and/or non-{ambiguous,misleading}ly?

Because to not do so would be a huge waste of effort and defeat the whole purpose of the project.

[Dead Kennedy]

Well, okay, you have a point.


Why label the links accurately and/or non-{ambiguous,misleading}ly?

Two reasons:

1) Because that's how Choose Your Own Adventure does it.

2) That's not funny, that's just obnoxious.  Being obnoxious to your audience is a sign of hatred for your audience.  I'm going to expound on that for a moment, because honestly I don't think a lot of Discordians get it. 

Obviously the Discordian movement counts the DADA movement as one of it's heirs, and DADAism has influenced the ways Discordians express themselves.  Operation Mindfuck is a totally DADA sort of thing.  But what is easily forgotten about DADA is that it actually has a point.  Go read the DADA Manifesto by Tristian T'zara, and buried in all the bullcrap you'll find a real issue the DADAists had: they didn't think the post-WW1 European audiences of wealthy elites they were forced to entertain to secure patronage deserved entertainment.  They hated their audience, so their response was to create obnoxious, disturbing and unenjoyable art.

So the question then becomes:  Why do we want to annoy our audience?  This thing will only be read by other Discordians.  Do we hate other Discordians?  Are we deriving pleasure from the knowledge that we have set them up for frustration and annoyance until they realize the Choose Your Path function is broken/doesn't work?

I think a Non-Fiction Choose Your Own Adventure is a brilliant idea with real potential.  It has the appeal of the World Wide Web, which allows you to follow ideas, while maintaining the Traditional Book's ability to convey a "big picture."  I sense this could be a very effective way to convey a lot of ideas and exposition in a way that entertains and maintains the interest.

I don't see any point to throwing that potential away just to annoy some fellow Discordians for a few seconds, especially since we won't get to see that annoyance.

[Cainad (dec.)]

An anti-Pinealist n00b! Why can't we have more of these?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Well, okay, you have a point.


Why label the links accurately and/or non-{ambiguous,misleading}ly?

Two reasons:

1) Because that's how Choose Your Own Adventure does it.

2) That's not funny, that's just obnoxious.  Being obnoxious to your audience is a sign of hatred for your audience.  I'm going to expound on that for a moment, because honestly I don't think a lot of Discordians get it. 

Obviously the Discordian movement counts the DADA movement as one of it's heirs, and DADAism has influenced the ways Discordians express themselves.  Operation Mindfuck is a totally DADA sort of thing.  But what is easily forgotten about DADA is that it actually has a point.  Go read the DADA Manifesto by Tristian T'zara, and buried in all the bullcrap you'll find a real issue the DADAists had: they didn't think the post-WW1 European audiences of wealthy elites they were forced to entertain to secure patronage deserved entertainment.  They hated their audience, so their response was to create obnoxious, disturbing and unenjoyable art.

So the question then becomes:  Why do we want to annoy our audience?  This thing will only be read by other Discordians.  Do we hate other Discordians?  Are we deriving pleasure from the knowledge that we have set them up for frustration and annoyance until they realize the Choose Your Path function is broken/doesn't work?

I think a Non-Fiction Choose Your Own Adventure is a brilliant idea with real potential.  It has the appeal of the World Wide Web, which allows you to follow ideas, while maintaining the Traditional Book's ability to convey a "big picture."  I sense this could be a very effective way to convey a lot of ideas and exposition in a way that entertains and maintains the interest.

I don't see any point to throwing that potential away just to annoy some fellow Discordians for a few seconds, especially since we won't get to see that annoyance.

Well said! I also appreciate that you recoginize the actual Dada movement and not the 5 minute Wikipedia version that so many people seem to discuss

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Bah. I wouldn't be annoyed with ambiguously worded links. After all, that's 3/4s of the fun of something like zork or advent, right? If you apply totally unambiguous and completely correct labels to a nonfiction thing the same way you might otherwise apply it to a narrative, although *some* people may take advantage of the nonlinear text aspect, *most* people are going to use it to create a "daily me", which I don't think is the point.

That said, I'm assuming that this is based on something non-narrative in form. If we are going by the history of the movement{s,}, then if we assume that people don't already know much of it, we might have something interesting come out of it.

Furthermore, I suppose I should give examples to elucidate what I mean by misleading or ambiguous labels.

I do not mean:

* Peanut
* Fnord gobbler

Instead, I mean something more like:

* But, let's step back in time a bit to something that may be of interest to our protagonists Thornley and the gang
* Or, we can step forward, to see what came out of it.
* Or we can take a break at the local coffee house

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Bah. I wouldn't be annoyed with ambiguously worded links. After all, that's 3/4s of the fun of something like zork or advent, right? If you apply totally unambiguous and completely correct labels to a nonfiction thing the same way you might otherwise apply it to a narrative, although *some* people may take advantage of the nonlinear text aspect, *most* people are going to use it to create a "daily me", which I don't think is the point.

That said, I'm assuming that this is based on something non-narrative in form. If we are going by the history of the movement{s,}, then if we assume that people don't already know much of it, we might have something interesting come out of it.

Furthermore, I suppose I should give examples to elucidate what I mean by misleading or ambiguous labels.

I do not mean:

* Peanut
* Fnord gobbler

Instead, I mean something more like:

* But, let's step back in time a bit to something that may be of interest to our protagonists Thornley and the gang
* Or, we can step forward, to see what came out of it.
* Or we can take a break at the local coffee house

Ah! That's an interesting consideration... It may even give less of a linear feel and more of a 'causal feedback" feel. I like that.